Hello Guys and Gals, Ginger Gaming Mentor here I spent about 11 hours yesterday playing with the Patch and having fun going through the Terror Zones so I wanted to give my Feedback on them.
Let’s Start With The Good
#1 Encourages Use of Zones that are otherwise not visited.
This is a really big one for me and one of the reason I love the Terror Zones So much. They create a very interesting way of encouraging players to go to and play in zones they wouldn’t have thought twice about before.
#2 Perhaps Difficult for Botters to Exploit
Some of these zones are extremely difficult to program for, without static routes, or a specific monster to hunt, as well as the zones themselves being completely random makes for lots of wildcards that could potentially make botting much more difficult in these zones.
#3 Easier Leveling to 99
It’s no secret that I am a youtuber, and no secret that I attempted to hit lvl 99 this season the legitimate way. Which is to say not having an entire team of people feed you diablo, nihlathak and baal kills. And Not having 7 other people sit around in the game letting me kill everything myself.
What I discovered is that for a solo person to hit 99 in 4 months with it basically being their job working at it 8-12 hour days it is next to impossible.
So I am actually quite excited that they decided to fix this, not just for me but for the massive number of people with jobs who can’t devote anywhere near the amount of time I can.
#4 Less Boring Leveling to 99
So, it’s no secret that Leveling a Character to 99 requires doing the same runs over and over again for hundreds of hours. It’s boring, and it’s not surprising that it’s mind numbingly boring because you are literally performing the same repetitive task over and over again for sometimes 8-10 hours a day.
So a Relief from this boredom is welcome.
#5 A Fun Challenge
Having new high level areas to go is a fun challenge more so than the lvl 85 areas we currently have. I do really enjoy the idea of eventually getting to be able to do lvl 96 cows, lvl 96 Chaos, lvl 96 baal runs, lvl 96 Tower, and lvl 96 travincal.
There is no end to the fun I think that can be had in this Terror system if it is done properly
#6 The Zones Scale with your character
This is a great feature Imo because it allows anyone to participate in the zones, and have an on level place to exp up. I do however think that the zones should be limited like The cow level in that it requires you to complete the difficulty setting to participate.
Now Let’s Get To The Bad
#1 Monster Density is too low.
I don’t know what’s going on with the monster density in these new terror zones but they feel like they are less than normal. Which is saying a lot.
The Density of the monster groups in these zones needs to be increased dramatically, the main issue here is that as I run through the Terror zones I am met with almost entirely empty space. Which is a very bad thing.
#2 zones need a big monster to feel real terror
I feel like the idea solid but what would really make it better is if a specific super unique monster were spawned into zones with a much higher level. Something that would challenge the players. Perhaps that also has a similar mechanic to the ubers that spawns monsters around it continually. These spawned monsters would of course have no exp.
#3 The Zones need to be more difficult
As it is in players 1 the zones are unfortunately quite pathetic in difficulty. I would like to see the difficulty of the zones bumped up quite a bit. If these zones are supposed to induce Terror, Let’s have them be terrorizing. To do that they need to be difficult, and the more difficult imo the better.
#4 Some of the zones are too small and and need to be linked to others.
As a For instance let me point out glacial trail, which is for some reason not linked with Drifter Cavern. This is a big misstep imo, you need to think about the size of the zones, and add additional zones as required.
Going over your list on the news article I can pull out several options.
Frigid Highlands should include the special zone within it, I believe it’s abbadon(The Giant Red Portal)
I Think River of Flame and Chaos Sanctuary should be together
Travincal is too small by itself and needs to include the Temples in Kurast Causeway
Tristram is too small on it’s own, and you should honestly combine Tristram and Moo Moo Farms because they are linked by the leg anyway.
Black Marsh should include The Forgotten Tower
Arreat Plateau Should Include the Pit of Acheron
#5 Single Player needs Terror Zones Too
I don’t know what the plans are for Terror Zones, whether they are planned for ladder only, everyone, or just online players. I am not sure, but Terror Zones should definitely be available to Single player characters.
#6 No Restriction for use
I do really like the idea of These Terror Zones, but I feel like just like the cow level they should be restricted to beating the difficulty setting. Just like the cow level though if a player who has completed the difficulty setting creates a game than they can participate.
Infact pretty much just copy the cow levels Restrictions exactly.
#7 Teleport/Town Portal would make things to easy
To increase the Terror of the zones, make Teleport/Town Portal disabled within the zones. This would have a nice double edged effect of making it more challenging, and hurting botters at the same time.
In closing I want to say that I feel like this is an amazing idea, that both utilizes existing content within the game, and encourages players to go to zones they would not normally go to. Breaks the monotony of Baal, Diablo, and Nihlathak runs. As Well as can be toggled off for those that would rather not participate.
The Terror Zones have my Complete backing, and although I do feel they need some tweaks to become amazing. The Dev Team has really hit on a gold mine here, and you need to continue refining it until it’s 99.9% pure gold.
